Or at least I think it is, though I’m fully prepared to hear from someone who actually believes red tides, sargassam seaweed and phosphate dumping are good things.

The sign brings attention to an ambitious petition drive to place a state constitutional amendment on the 2024 ballot that would create a “fundamental right to clean and healthy waters” for all Floridians and give legal standing to residents, nongovernmental organizations or government entities to sue to defend those rights. In essence, it would direct the state to enforce the water regulations that already exist and legally ensure the healthy status of all bodies of water in and surrounding the state.

But wait, you say. Aren’t there already dozens, if not hundreds, of regulations pertaining to the preservation of our water quality and eco-system? Well, yes – and no. With more than half of Florida’s 4,393 waterways polluted or unhealthy, neither the state’s environmental regulatory system nor citizens’ efforts to fix it have been effective.

In 2020, Orange County – prompted by the threat of a development that would destroy more than 63 acres of wetlands and 33 acres of streams for residential and commercial development – became the largest municipality in the nation (1.5 million residents) to pass a “rights of nature” referendum.

Last July, however, the first lawsuit filed under the measure was dismissed when a judge ruled it was in opposition to the state’s 2020 Clean Waterways Act, which disallows granting legal rights to any “part of the natural environment.”

The Florida Rights of Nature Network (FRONN), a citizens’ group that spearheaded the Orange County charter change, was forced to reconsider its approach. Ultimately, instead of declaring the rights of nature, they decided to declare a fundamental human right to nature – because our health, economy and wildlife all depend on it. In other words, the focus of the new amendment became the people’s right to clean water, not the waters’ right to be clean.

But the challenge to get it on the ballot is considerable. In recent years, the state doubled the number of petition signatures required, as well as imposing a review of proposed ballot language during the petition-gathering process by the state Supreme Court to insure its legality. FRONN members, who have gone over the referendum with a fine-toothed comb, are convinced its language will withstand any test, but the 900,000 petition signatures required must be gathered and individually certified by November to have the measure placed on the 2024 ballot.

Every signature, however, must be filed on an official paper copy of the petition and must contain either a birth date or a voter registration number, so it can be certified by the local supervisors of elections. While Sarasota residents are likely to see petition-gatherers at events and popular venues throughout the summer, they can also download and print the petition form (at righttocleanwater.org) and mail it in, or visit the petition station at Architectural Salvage (1093 Central Ave.), which will have petitions available and handle their delivery.

“The most important thing we did was change the perspective,” she says.

“Now there can only be lawsuits against the state itself in order to make it do what it’s already been told to do by the citizens. We can then enforce what’s been passed over for decades, reinvigorate the agencies that are supposed to be dealing with this, and make science the basis for how things are dealt with, rather than politics.”

Contact Carrie Seidman at carrie.seidman@gmail.com or 505-238-0392.